I see “Begin Again” as an ideal theme for this season. We have the supreme opportunity now in the autumn of our midlife to begin again. How shall we reinvent our Selves? What new programs, projects and passions are on the horizon for us? Please send me your stories of change, transition, and transformation. Our shared experiences serve to inspire and empower us all.

Thanks.  xxQueen Mama Donna

There is an intense white light, an inner glow that now emanates from the people of New York City. We had risen to an unthinkable occasion and we liked ourselves for doing so. We reached out to our neighbors and we found that we liked them, too. And everyone really liked how good it feels to feel good about themselves and each other. People want desperately to do right, to do good, to be good, to live right.

In the hardest of times, we managed to transcend what makes us human and embodied what makes us humane. We saw the putrid smoke of destruction burn clean with the spirit of true communion. We in our beleaguered town have tasted grace. We recognized it for what it is and we cherished living in its beneficence.

So many people have expressed to me their apprehension that as things return to normal, people will lose some of their newfound consciousness of perspective and interdependence. But why go back there? What used to be normal didn’t really pan out all that well, it seems to me. That old normal isn’t nearly good enough for us who are divine and beautiful beings. Our challenge and our joy is to make this miracle of living in caring community be the new normal.

The way I see it, we are at a cross-roads in our evolution. Either we will figure out how to live together on one planet without violence. Or we won’t. We expect this of our kids at school. We expect it in our families and at our jobs.

We are modern dinosaurs and it is up to us whether this meteor storm that we have just suffered will drive us to extinction. As Glen, the copier machine mechanic remarked, “this is like a wake-up call.” Well it is actually more like an air raid siren going off in the middle of the night. Emergency. 911.

I have just been reading Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss about the original Siamese Twins who were, in fact, from Siam. Here were two men, fraternal twins, a double-boy, physically dissimilar and with radically different personalities who lived for 64 years connected to each other at the chest by a 5 inch long band of muscle and cartilage which housed their single stomach.

They married two sisters and had 21 biracial children between them. This in the constrained society of the Victorian American South. These twins managed to make an awkward, untenable situation work because they had to. They couldn’t walk away or hurt the other without suffering that same harm themselves. They learned how to live together because they had no choice.

Can we do less?

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Donna Henes is the author of The Queen of My Self: Stepping into Sovereignty in Midlife. She is the Midlife Midwife™ offering counseling and upbeat, practical and ceremonial guidance for individual women and groups who want to enjoy the fruits of an enriching, influential, purposeful, passionate, and powerful maturity.

Consult the MIDLIFE MIDWIFE™: http://www.donnahenes.net/queen/consult.shtml

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The Queen welcomes questions concerning all issues of interest to women in their mature years. Send your inquiries to thequeenofmyself@aol.com.